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![I’m pleased that businesses are committed to enhancing their ongoing work across welfare and the environment.” So said Allen Simpson, chief executive of UKHospitality, last week as he announced that eight of his member businesses were setting up the “Sustainable Chicken Forum”, which “will play a vital role to make even more progress, as well as overcoming this shared supply challenge”.
The statement also confirmed that the businesses – between them the owners of 18 high street brands including Burger King, Frankie & Benny’s, KFC, and Wagamama – were dropping out of the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC). This is the promise these companies, and others in the UK, plus hundreds across Europe, made to give the birds in their supply chain more space, longer, more fulfilling lives and the most humane death.
With eight dropping out, this leaves 14 UK companies still signed up (Compassion in World Farming, which runs the commitment, could not tell me whether this was accurate). Greggs, Subway and Pret are still ‘in’, so too the Azzurri Group, which runs Zizzi and Ask pizza chains, and Marks and Spencer. To date, Waitrose is the one to have met all six commitments in full, as the chief operating officer Charlotte Di Cello explains: “Fresh and frozen, sandwiches, pizza, ready meals, gravy – all Waitrose brand chicken [have met BCC criteria].”
The deadline for everyone else to catch up is the end of this year. The chances of many following Waitrose’s lead are slim. The likelier bet is on more UK companies following the eight out of the door (Unilever seems to have now dropped out too). That the brands enjoyed plenty of positive PR in signing up around 2020 – and since – is quickly forgotten.
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